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Research and Development (R&D) Exchange Workshop
October 28 - October 29, 2004
Monterey, California

Theme / Fact sheet

Theme

The two-day event will be held at the Monterey Marriott. The Thursday session will be held from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and the Friday session will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. This year's theme is A Year Later: R&D Issues to Ensure Trustworthiness in Telecommunications and Information Systems that Directly or Indirectly Impact National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP). Dr. John Marburger, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and Dr. Charles McQueary, Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are invited to present keynote addresses during the opening plenary session and to participate in the summation session.

Fact Sheet

The Research and Development Exchange (RDX) Workshop is a special event conducted periodically by the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) to stimulate and facilitate a dialogue among industry, Government, and academia on emerging security technology research and development (R&D) issues. The President’s NSTAC, in the past, has invited representatives from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology; various academic institutions; and companies from across the telecommunications and information technology landscape, to participate in past RDX Workshops to ensure inclusion of all stakeholders in the R&D community. The results of the RDX Workshop will be captured in a Proceedings document that is published by the President’s NSTAC.

In 1990, the growing prevalence of hacker incidents led to the formation of the NSTAC’s Network Security Task Force. Its purpose was to assess the threats to and vulnerabilities of the Public Switched Telephone Network. A key component of the task force’s work included examining R&D issues related to security with a particular emphasis on improving commercially applicable tools. To explore security technology R&D issues in greater depth, the RDX Workshop concept first surfaced in 1991. To date, there have been five workshop events:

• RDX Workshop #1 (1991): the first workshop consisted of two separate events intended to provide a forum for industry and Government officials to share their unique perspectives on R&D issues. In the first session, Government representatives presented their views on security technology R&D issues. In the second session, industry representatives provided their perspectives on R&D issues related to network and telecommunications security.
  
• RDX Workshop #2 (1996): the second workshop facilitated a discussion of network security problems affecting national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) telecommunications, identified R&D programs in progress to address those problems, and identified future security technology R&D needs. Four broad security topics were discussed: authentication, intrusion detection, integrity, and access control.
  
• RDX Workshop #3 (1998): held at Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security in West Lafayette, Indiana, the third workshop examined collaborative approaches to security technology R&D. The participants also discussed the need for training more information technology security professionals, creating large-scale testbeds to test security products and solutions, and promoting the creation of Information Assurance (IA) Centers of Excellence in academia.
  
• RDX Workshop #4 (2000): the fourth workshop, held at the University of Tulsa, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, examined issues of transparent security in a converged and distributed network environment. Attendees discussed the need to address the shortage of qualified information security professionals, expand the number of universities participating in the IA Centers of Excellence program, and promote best practices, standards, and protection profiles to enhance the security of the Next Generation Network.
  
• RDX Workshop 5 (2003): held at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia, the fifth workshop focused on “Research and Development Issues to Ensure Trustworthiness in Telecommunications and Information Systems that Directly or Indirectly Impact National Security and Emergency Preparedness”. Participants examined the trustworthiness issue from four different perspectives: cyber security and software, human factors, physical security, and integration issues.

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